Collison Detection between two point clouds using PCL

Question

Given two point clouds such that one point cloud is static whereas other is mobile obstacle. We want to move the mobile point cloud obstacle in space and note down whether it is intersecting with the static point cloud at that position. Is there a function available in PCL to do this automatically or do we have to write our own function to do the same?

Answer 1

The fcl (Flexible Collision Library) library can do fast collision detection.

Here are the supported different object shapes:

• sphere
• box
• cone
• cylinder
• mesh
• octree (optional, octrees are represented using the octomap library http://octomap.github.com)

I assume your point clouds are samples drawn from the surface of objects that occupy a volume in 3D space. So, you'll have to transform your point clouds into a mesh or in an occupancy octree.